We spent the past several days exploring the beautiful water andbeaches on Hoffmans, Devil's Cay and Little Harbour in the BerryIslands. On Hoffmans we hiked a trail that led to a giant Blue Hole,a lovely beach and the ruins of what looked like an old still.Devil's Cay had ruins of an old building, a natural swimming holeformed by low rocks, and several nice beaches seperated by cliffs.The Little Harbour anchorage had a lot of current and was a bituncomfortable so we found another spot next to the most amazing littlebeach. We had a lively dinner Friday night at Flo's Conch Bar. It'sthe sort of place where you have to make a reservation a day ahead,not because it's swanky or ritzy, but because they need time to gocatch the lobster and conch and they only cook if they are sure tohave customers. We were the only dinner customers that night and thefood was great. A lively bunch from a 120 ft motor yacht arrived whilewe were eating and treated us to another round of rum punch. Theywere a bit boisterous and added to the fun. We left Little Harbour early Saturday morning to travel to AndrosIsland. I'm happy to report that it was a good days sail which Ineeded to rebuild my confidence. I was able to get the mainsail up,with one reef, while the boat was bouncing up and down in some livelywaves. Yes, I had my harness strapped to the mast. I even managed toget the whisker pole arrangement to work, and we sailed along wing andwing for most of the day. It was hard to set the pole while the boatwas rolling heavily from side to side, but somehow I managed. We hadan 8 hour downwind sail and surfed our way into the anchorage atMorgan's Bluff around 5 p.m. I had a strange fantasy that we would be able to find a store open sowe could buy a ham for Easter dinner. However, Morgan's Bluff was notmuch of a town. A gas station, bar, run down marina of sorts, and ahuge beach made up the whole place. Nothing to buy but a beer andconch salad. We were told it was a 15 minute bike ride in toNicholl's Town where we'd find a big grocery store but it was toolate. Next day on Easter morning, Coleen, Sue and I were up early and onshore with our bikes by 8 a.m. headed to the 8:30 worship at theAnglican Church in Nicholls Town, as it was the only church I couldfind on the internet with a service time. Ugh, that was early, butoff we went. Thankfully it was a cool, cloud covered morning and theride was mostly flat through an endless pine forest on a nice pavedroad. We got directions by stopping a passing car. We rode and rodeuntil I thought I was going to drop. Forty five minutes into our 15minute ride, I finally pulled over at a small store. We went inside,got snacks and water, then sat on the benches to regroup. The storeclerk said it was still a long ways to town. After resting a bit, wedecided that we didn't want to be all dressed up in our Easter clotheswith nowhere to go and that we would keep going. Easter Service orbust! There must be another church with a later service and we'd findit. After stopping two more cars for directions, we finally made it tothe town. By now it was 9:40, but we got a second wind as we began tosee a little civilization. We spied an elderly couple walkingcarrying Bibles. They were on their way to the Zion Methodist Churchand the service started at 10. Yeah! They gave us directions and soonwe were pushing our bikes up the grass parking lot on the side of asteep hill overlooking the beach. We propped our bikes on the side ofthe church, dusted off and took a few pictures. The church doors wereheld shut by a 4 foot piece of a large log. Its whitewashed walls wereat least 2 feet thick, trimmed in mint green paint.It lacked anyadornment other than a sign carved into the cement above the doorwaythat read " Behold I Stand at the Door and Knock". Soon enough the elderly couple arrived and the gentleman removed thelog and we all filed in. The simple church had very comfortable pews,a small organ, a lecturn, a few cieling fans, and not much else, noteven a restroom, much to my dismay. As the church began to fill itwas almost eerily quiet. The pastor, a large black man, whom we laterlearned was from Haiti, came in wearing formal pastor attire.Everyone else was dressed to the nines in their Easter dresses, hatsor suits with ties. We had done our best, but still looked a bitscraggly after our long bike ride. The pastor passed out prayer books, a Methodist hymnal (which hadsongs like, "God Bless our Queen"), and a United Methodist Hymnal.The service started out very formal, with 3 scripture readings byvarious congregation members, and traditional Methodist hymns. Theonly music was the beat of a set of bongo drums played by a young man.Somehow it seemed to work. The crowd of 25 or so people sang moreloudly than my church back home with a 1,000. It was amazing. Soonwe were singing some newer songs like "Lord I lift your Name on High".Everyone knew the words by heart and clapped and sang and the drumswent on and on. One song rolled into another and before you knew itwe'd been singing for 20 minutes. I'm quite sure I've never quite hadso much fun in church. The joy in that place was abounding! Thepastor gave the most lively sermon I've ever heard and was withoutdoubt the most joy filled person I've ever met. He just radiatedhappiness. Finally at the end of the service, after a very formalcommunion, everyone greeted each other. Literally every person huggedevery other person. It was such a friendly crowd. After the service, the elderly couple invited us to their home fortea. They were from Canada and had been wintering on the island for 40years. We also had an offer for a ride back in a car so we had to dothat instead. It took two cars to get us and our bikes back to thedinghy landing. Coleen and I rode with the most kind lady, who alsohappened to be the principal at the high school. After dropping offour bikes, she offered to give us a ride to the store. On the way sheasked if we'd like to get tomatoes from the school garden, too. Ofcourse we said yes to that. Soon enough we were at the huge gardenwith over a hundred rows of tomato plants and peppers. She gave useach a bag and let us pick as much as we wanted, and then offeredpeppers too. It turns out the school garden supplies tomatoes andpeppers to a hotel in Nassau and the students manage the garden. Theyalso raised pigs. She refused payment saying that the garden projectwas ending on Monday as it was time for the students to began studyingfor national exams, and all the rest of the tomatoes would go towaste. Imagine that! We then went to the little grocery store thatheld only a few fresh items. I managed to get grapes, romaine,broccili and a few bananas for $14, no ham to be found, only a veryold frozen turkey at $2.60/pound. I passed on that. By now it was only 1 o'clock and we'd already had the most amazingEaster ever. Upon arriving back at the dinghy landing we found Tomand DJ and few other boaters hanging out enjoying the 3 for $5 beerand fixing an outboard engine. We finally persuaded someone to give usa ride back to the boat so we could have lunch and a nap. Later weshared Easter dinner with Tom and Sue. Sue brought a salad and I madea pasta dish with some of DJ's freeze dried ham chunks. It was goodbut certainly not traditional. We ended the evening with a fun gameof Apples to Apples. Sue says when she's 80 she's going to call me from the nursing homeand say "remember that Easter on Andros"!

The weather forecast called for squalls from the south/southwest inthe morning followed by a strong west wind changing to north byevening. We had lightening on the horizion when I crawled out of mybunk, so I quickly took Prince to shore and got back just as theraindrops started to fall. The morning was spent catching up on a fewchores and collecting as much rainwater as possible. We have severalmethods for collecting rain on the Glass Slipper, the easiest ofwhich, is to set buckets in the cockpit on each side, where waterdrips from the bimini. The other methods requite a bit more effortand getting wet, so I lazily, just put out my buckets. The sqalls, none of which had more than 30 knots of wind, continuedto roll in and out until around 3 p.m. As soon as the last one waspast, according to our radar, we raised anchor and headed south towarda small anchorage between Hoffman and Devil's Cay. It was only a 12mile journey and what wind we had was on the rear quarter.Unfortuanately it wasn't much wind at all, so progress was slow butpleasant. I tried without sucess to use my new whisker polearrangement and was a bit frustrated that I couldn't get it to work. Ihad to hand steer to keep the jib out so we could sail wing and wing,which is where you have the mainsail on one side and the headsail onthe other. It worked quite well for a couple of hours and we werescooting along at 5 knots. Then it happened. Somehow the jib got backwinded around the forestay, meaning itwrapped around in the opposite direction. No amount of effort on mypart could pull it back in place. The sail was flapping and floppingand making all kinds of angry noises. I could just picture my new,very expensive sail being blown to pieces. Finally I decided totrying turning the boat head into the wind. Of course as thingshappen, the wind was now blowing around 20 knots gusting to 25. Theseas had piped up a bit and Coleen had a terrible time trying to keepthe boat headed into the wind. As soon as we got dead to wind, theheadsail unwrapped itself and I was able to roll it in. One crisisaverted. Now to any of my sailing friends out there... was this theright thing to do? I've never had this happen before and didn't evenreally know it was a possiblity. I'd appreciate any feedback onthis.... Anyway, by now, we had to turn to make our approach into theanchorage between the islands. Of course it was getting late, andalmost impossible to read the water. I totally had to rely on the GPS,which is rarely a good plan. Thankfully, it was fairlystraightforward although the motion was pretty awful as we had thewaves on the beam during our approach. Now the fun really began as itwas time to find a place to anchor admist the many other boats in thesmall place. Our friends on Adante were already anchored andPerservernce was in the process. We spied a place near Andante, butnot too close, with a small sandy patch to drop the hook. With Coleenat the helm we slowly made our approach, but just as I dropped thehook, the current grabbed the boat and I missed the spot. The anchorlanded in grass, not good holding. I had to pull it up again, and weheaded out to find another spot. I finally got frustrated and headedout to a place far from everyone else, dropped the hook again and thenit dragged when backed it down. So I pulled it up again. Finally, onthe 3rd try, much yelling, angry words, and thrown headsets, wefinally were anchored in a fairly decent spot with good holding. Iwas not proud of that performance, either the anchoring or my ownlittle fit. It was time for a pity party. I declined Andante's dinner invitationand instead stayed in and felt sorry for my own ineptitude allevening. I just wanted to go home, but couldn't figure out where thatwas. Then I realized I was home and that felt even worse. Yes, I wasin quite the mood and went to bed with a frown.

Well, after a miserable night at anchor we were more than ready to haul up the hook in the choppy seas and seek comfort within the security of the sheltered Great Harbour Marina. We arrived around 9:30 a.m. and the friendly dock hands assisted with tying the boat and then gave us a stack of forms to fill out for the Customs officer. Prince was literally going wild as he was so ready to go to shore. All aboard are supposed to stay aboard until the ship is cleared by customs, but after an hour of waiting, I finally let Coleen quickly take him to do his business. I guess 48 hours at sea was long enough for him. It took a while to fill out the stack of forms, most of which asked for the same information. The Customs officer finally showed up around noon and I met him in the dockmasters office. It took about a half hour to complete the paperwork. The whole time I was cheerful on the outside, but inside sweating bullets that he would notice that my ships documentation was set to expire in about 10 days. Thankfully he didn't notice or care and after paying the $300 fee we were soon taking down the yellow flag and raising our colorful Bahamian courtesy flag. After a quick lunch, we set out to explore the island. It was a bit of a walk to Bullock’s Harbour, the very small town. It held a few tiny stores, a very nice school, and a couple of churches. It was a hot walk in the sun and our little dog gave up after the first mile and had to be carried. You’d think after our long voyage he’d have been ready to walk forever, but no so on those little legs. All told we walked 5.8 miles, according to our Runkeeper tally, and we were exhausted but happy. Later we had a little hog dog cookout supper on Andente’s sundeck. I was so tired that by 8 p.m. I was back in my bunk under the covers. I didn’t wake again until 6 a.m. when a wake shoved the boat against the dock hard. Today we’re not really sure what we’re doing, maybe heading on, maybe attending an island fundraiser/party.